Summer is Back

Busy day yesterday.   I have been working for a while with the Cotswold Line Promotion Group (CLPG) who are running a special train over the S&C on Monday.  The train will stop for 30 minutes at Settle whilst they unveil a plaque to their founder chairman, Oliver Lovell who was a source of valuable advice when the S&C was under threat of closure in the 1980s.

Oliver left a substantial bequest to FoSCL to be used on the S&C for the benefit of passengers which resulted in two new waiting shelters, at Settle and Appleby. 

Plaques will be unveiled at both shelters so somebody had to fix them in place.   That somebody was me, yesterday.   That involved a train trip to Appleby with just a 20 minute window before the return train from Carlisle for Settle.  I only just made it too!   The southbound train pulled in while I was tightening the final screw.  Then I had to scoop up the tools and bits and pieces before dashing from the shelter, on the opposite side from the train.

Fortunately, the driver saw and recognised me, put two and two together and held the train.   As it happened the crowded train made good time and when we got to Garsdale it had to wait for five minutes or so to keep to its slack timetable.   I had plonked myself on the jump seat in the guards lobby and the door was left open whilst the guard went for a stroll in the sunshine, enabling me to get this picture of Ruswarp, still loyally on watch:

A fraught morning therefore so I treated myself to a siesta in the afternoon, followed by a sunny sit-out on the roof with a well deserved cuppa.  Note the name on my favourite mug:

Must have been up there for a couple of hours, watching the comings and goings at the station and the sun going down over the Bowland Fells, by which time the tea had turned to wine.  Miraculous.